Student Experience

Bedtime stories of torts and contracts inspire law school path

One of Ashby Shores’ earliest memories was falling asleep to bedtime stories read by his father, a third-year law student at the time.

These were no ordinary nighttime tales like “Goodnight Moon” or “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” His father, Ryan Shores, a 2003 graduate of the UVA School of Law, read aloud from his casebooks to lull his son to sleep.

portrait of Ashby Shores and Ryan Shores

Ashby Shores is following in his father’s footsteps, going to law school. His father, Ryan, was in torts class at UVA Law when he learned his wife was in labor with Ashby. (Contributed photo)

“I remember it being fairly incomprehensible,” Ashby Shores acknowledges now. Then again, he was only a toddler.

Now, 22 years later, Ashby Shores will attend UVA Law this fall, an event that evokes in his parents a sense of nostalgia.

After leaving an advertising career in New York, father Ryan Shores remembers his first visit to Grounds with his wife, April, as a perfect day – sunlight filtering through the Lawn’s trees, students picnicking on the grass and the distant pings of softball bats mixed with cheers.

“Both April and I just immediately fell in love,” Ryan Shores said. “It felt like such a reprieve from that hectic world, and if we were going to be parents in law school, we sure did want to be somewhere where people enjoyed their law school time and were supportive of one another.”

Their decision made, the couple bought a $2,000 Honda Civic spotted on a New York City street and packed their meager belongings. April Shores wedged a box fan between the dashboard and her pregnant belly.

Get ready for the ride — shop the UVA Bookstore.

In Charlottesville, they moved into family housing units on Copeley Hill, quickly bonding with similarly situated students. One medical student neighbor loaned Ryan Shores his pager, in case his wife went into labor while he was in class.

As family legend has it, the pager failed.

During professor G. Edward White’s torts class, a Law School administrator ran into the lecture hall, waved her arms, and said, “Would Mr. Shores please gather up his belongings and meet me in the hallway?”

Concerned, another student stood up to defend him, asking what was happening. The administrator, now breathless, looked at him. “Mr. Shores’ wife is in labor, and he needs to get to the hospital immediately.”

According to corroborating witnesses – including the professor – the entire class erupted in a standing ovation for the soon-to-be-father.

“There were maybe five law students with very young kids, plus medical and business students who were parents, so we had this group of families, and we did a lot of stuff together,” Ryan Shores said.

Highlights included autumn soccer games, dinners at Casella’s Pizza or El Puerto, softball games, and Ashby learning to ride tricycles with his first friend, Weston, in front of Copeley.

a family photo of Ryan and April Shores with their children sitting on the grass in front of the UVA Law School

April Shores, Ashby’s mother, says there was a “close-knit community” of families they met while her husband was attending UVA Law. “We cherished those early years together against the wonderful backdrop of the Charlottesville and UVA community,” April Shores said. (Contributed photo)

“We had a close-knit community of people, like us, with small kids, and we cherished those early years together against the wonderful backdrop of the Charlottesville and UVA community,” April Shores said.

As a child, Ashby was treated to behind-the-scenes snippets of the life of a young lawyer, including cooling off in one of the U.S. Supreme Court’s three marble fountains while his dad clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

He learned to revere the law and its power. “That’s something my dad always raised me to think about. I mean, he was reading his textbooks to me,” Ashby Shores said.

But he felt a desire to carve a path in life apart from his dad’s Washington, D.C., legal career and his extended family’s athletic feats. His maternal grandfather was the first to climb all 52 of Colorado’s then-acknowledged 14,000-foot peaks in just 52 days, and two of his uncles played football at the University of Colorado.

The happy, active memories of Charlottesville pulled Ashby this way, and he chose to attend an all-boys boarding school at nearby Woodberry Forest. Sports at Woodberry quickly humbled him, prompting him to focus on academics and major in history at Dartmouth College.

“I got punted around the football field, dropped more than my share of pop flies, and I never won a single wrestling match,” Ashby said.

While at Dartmouth, Ashby landed internships in investment banking and lobbying, and he worked on a project as a Deloitte consultant for nearly two years after college.

“I enjoyed it, but I wanted to do something where I could engage with policy issues and really use my full brain,” Ashby Shores said.

That led him back to UVA Law.

“There are a lot of good law schools out there, but the things that mattered most to me were things you can’t really rank, things like culture and community,” Ashby said.